Playstation 3 Game Review: Ratatouille

Guiding a rat through 6 long lush levels in order to become a star chef sounds like a lot of fun in theory; however with quirky controls, and glitches around every corner, the game goes from fun, to "I'm done", in less than an hour.

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Ratatouille The Video Game

Ratatouille was one of the very first Playstation 3 games I purchased after I bought my console. I wanted to get the feel of the console by getting into something light, something I imagined would be easy, and besides that I watched the movie Ratatouille just 3 days prior, and I enjoyed it. I figured running around a large 3D environment as a little rat would be fun.

Ratatouille is based on a rat named Remy, who dreams of becoming a famous chef. The problem is obvious; Remy is a rat, and no one who is sane would seriously consider eating anything made by the hands of some dirty rodent.

At any rate though, it's up to you to make Remy's dream come true by guiding him through 6 dangerous levels in order to achieve super chef stardom.

The only problem with the plot in the actual game though is the very light plot presented to gamers. Had I not watched the movie, I really would have been confused on the whole objective of the games entirety.

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Game play in Ratatouille

Ratatouille starts off looking very promising, a long tutorial is presented to you at the very beginning, which is actually a lot of fun. This is where you are taught the ropes, by being presented with some interesting mini courses in order to fully understand how the controls work. After the tutorial you are basically thrown into the game, with a brief understanding of you main goal (to make your way up in the world with humans, in order to become a recognized star chef).

At the very beginning you learn all of Remy's special abilities, such as climbing, jumping, balancing, and whipping with his long skinny rat tail. The use of the Sixaxis control was also thrown into the game which was a nice little addition I was not at all expecting from such a low budget game.

The world I was first placed into was a simple backyard type atmosphere, with a lot of colorful lush details.

Ratatouille looked good! Ratatouille looked like a PS3 game that would pull me in and have me hooked from start to finish. Unfortunately I learned early on that the game came packaged with more quirks than I was willing to deal with.

Turn to next page to read about the games controls, and graphics. This section will also cover one of the games biggest flaws.

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Controlling the Game

The controls in Ratatouille are one huge factor in what caused this game to fail. Everything is simply laid out, but at times the controls would just refuse to respond to button commands. Angles in certain high jumping situations also failed miserably. The Sixaxis controls actually worked rather well and responded without any flaws, so it was strange that something as simple as button commands would flip out at times.

As the game progressed stages became increasingly difficult, and with controls that refused to respond on command, one small mishap and it could mean Remy dies, and sometimes depending how far you made it in the level, could mean starting the entire level over again. It's frustrating when playing 10 minutes in to a level, that you die due to some stupid mishap with the controls; it's all the more frustrating when you have to repeat that long sequence of game play over again.

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Graphics

I've seen better graphics come from other titles, but Ratatouille surprised me with it's pin sharp graphics, bold colors, and detailed environments. The pretty graphics will suck you in to game play at first, but like I said, when you have controls that refuse to work properly, sometimes all that glitters is not gold.

A lot of movie based video games seem to be doing well lately when it comes to presenting glorious graphics, but many movie based games still fail to play properly. Ratatouille is no exception. Pretty graphics, and horrid game play.

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Images

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The Biggest Issue Of All

Throw in bad controls, and throw in game glitches, and what we have folks is a horrible game. The cruddy controls is one thing, but an issue I could have dealt with, the non-stop glitches however turn this not so great game, into a horrendous game.

For no reason at all there were times when the game would just freeze up. The controls would no longer respond, and the Remy character would blink on and off on the screen. The only fix would be to get up from wherever you are playing and power off the console.

Other times when Remy would die, instead of re-loading back to the start point, the game would just freeze up. Other glitches included areas where Remy would get stuck, with no way out. Had he fallen behind a bunch of boxes, sometimes there would be no way out. Trapped like a rat. The only way out would be to start the game back up again.

Big mistakes like this in the game are what truly kills the fun.

Turn to the next page to read about some of the in game sounds, discover if the game has any re-play value, and get an overall user opinion on the game.

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Sounds

The sounds in the game can actually put you to sleep. Very soft rhythms play lightly in the background, while muffled out sounds that you would hear in a normal environment are repeated over and over again. While playing the non-stop chirping of what I only imagine could be birds would play over, and over again, with the same exact monotone chirp. After long it actually got annoying.

The voice acting is not entirely horrible and the voice overs added in to cut scenes are rather entertaining, but mostly it's a few of the same phrases said over, and over again, during actual game play which get really annoying after a short amount of time.

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Re-Play Value

Sadly Ratatouille for Playstation 3 has close to no re-play value. In fact you will likely get so fed up with the game that you will likely not even make it to the 3rd level before you just give up on it all together.

If you do manage to deal with the bad controls, and if you have the patience for the non-stop in game glitches perhaps you will make it to the very end of the game. Once that is done though, I can't see the game being picked up for another go around at all.

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Overall

Overall Ratatouille for Playstation 3 is a game that we can expect to find in $5.00 game bins (if it's not already there that is). Ratatouille was poorly executed, with receptive sounds, no re-play value, unresponsive controls, and glitches galore. The only positive thing going on in Ratatouille are it's squeaky clean crisp graphics. However, polished graphics are just not enough to get my final recommendation.

The strangest part about the game is that it is geared at children. I can't imagine a child being able to even get past level 2. If long term adult gamers have issues defeating the first few levels due to the poor controls and glitches, there is no way a child would be able to, or have the patience to even try.

Ratatouille is a Playstation 3 video game that I would recommend skipping; even if you do happen to stumble upon it in a $5.00 bin.